Living the Havana High Life
Cuba before Communism was a playground for those who could afford to play.
Chris Wild
1930s-1950s
Aline Johnson de Menocal meeting with her personal staff to plan a party.
Credit: Nina Leen/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Guests sit at outdoor tables in the Kastillito Club and talk together while a band performs in Varadero, Cuba.
Credit: Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Havana is a mistress of pleasure, the lush and opulent goddess of delights. - Cabaret Quarterly, 1956
Credit: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
A view of people dancing at a Cuban club.
Credit: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
A view of people dancing at a Cuban club.
Credit: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
It was during the presidency of Gerardo Machado in the '20s that Cuba's tourist trade really took off. Hotels, restaurants, night clubs, golf clubs and casinos sprung up in Havana catering to the rich jet-setters seeking luxury. Socialites, debutantes, celebrities like Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, and American mobsters came to play in the Cuban paradise.Tourism, and the growing and selling of sugar, was making some Cubans rich, but not all Cubans. What the tourists didn't see, or didn't want to, was the underclass, people of poverty like the macheteros — sugarcane cutters — who worked only during the four month season, and the rest of the year were unemployed, and angry.That degree of income inequality as well as accusations of corruption within the government of President Fulgencio Batista laid the groundwork for the Cuban Revolution, prompting an enduring economic embargo by the United States and the rapid end of Havana's high-life.
Credit: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
A Cuban rhumba dancer named Zulema performs on stage with a band at the Zombie Club on Zulueta Street in Havana.
Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Tropical cocktails at a bar in Havana.
Credit: Earl leaf/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images
Roulette dealer at the National Casino.
Credit: Francis Miller/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Casino players.
Credit: Francis Miller/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Socialites party under silk canopies in Havana.
Credit: Eliot Elisofon/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
A Havana casino.
Credit: Francis Miller/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Guests enjoying a buffet supper at the Havana Yacht Club.
Credit: Herbert C. Lanks/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Three women perched on the bar at the Cabaret Kursal nightclub in Havana.
Credit: Herbert C. Lanks/FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A party in Havana where the mothers chaperone their unmarried daughters.
Credit: Eliot Elisofon/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Socialite (debutante) Aileen Johnson Menocal eating breakfast in bed. The painting above her is supposedly her mother painted as the Madonna.
Credit: Nina Leen/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Cuban socialite Aline Johnson gets a pedicure will being visited by her friend Nina Gomez de Freyre.
Credit: Nina Leen/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Aline Johnson de Menocal with friends posing by a swimming pool. Havana, Cuba.
Credit: Nina Leen/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
President Batista's palace in Havana.
Credit: Central Press/Getty Images
A cane cutter and his family standing in front of their home.
Credit: George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
